


Taming

by Morgan (duckwhatduck)



Category: Le Petit Prince | The Little Prince - Antoine de Saint-Exupéry
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-09-22
Updated: 2013-09-22
Packaged: 2017-12-27 09:03:38
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,490
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/976943
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/duckwhatduck/pseuds/Morgan
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Meetings, partings, and the spaces in between.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Taming

**Author's Note:**

  * For [DWEmma](https://archiveofourown.org/users/DWEmma/gifts).



On summer days, the village children ate their lunches on the hill above the school, where the sweeping branches of a sycamore tree cast dappling shadows across the sunlit grass. The younger children rolled shrieking and laughing down the long slope of the hill, then scrambled to their feet, covered in grass, to run back up again. Bigger children, understood to be too old for this game, say under the tree; gossiping and making daisy-chains, or clambering in the branches of the big sycamore.  
At the end of the lunch hour, a teacher came out into the playground to ring the bell, and the children wandered back down to the school. Finally, the last stragglers trailed into the school, and the hill was deserted. An abandoned sandwich, a forgotten textbook, a couple of screwed-up pieces of paper blowing in the wind, and some flattened patches of grass, slowly springing back, were the only traces of them.

Mid-afternoon, as the children down in the school were watching the clock for home-time, two crows were fighting over the sandwich. The fox came strolling over the crest of the hill and bounded down towards the tree. The crows shrieked and flapped up, startled. The fox leaped up at them, snapping and barking, and came away spitting out a mouthful of tailfeathers. The crows circled, screeching.  
The fox nudged at the remnants of the sandwich, nosing out a fragment of ham and snapping it up greedily. He tried nibbling at a corner of the bread, then spat it back out. The butter, though...  
He was engrossed in licking the butter off the bread when the boy came up the hill.

School had just let out, and at the bottom of the hill children were streaming out and away along the road in knots and gaggles. The boy left his friends at the bottom to come running up the hill, shouting over his shoulder as he went. He slowed to a panting jog as he caught sight of the fox. With that obscure impulse which draws us to approach wild things; he walked slowly, as silent as he could, towards the creature, hand extended. The fox looked up, finally. They locked eyes for a moment; the fox took one last half-defiant lick at the sandwich and then turned and trotted away.

The boy paused and watched him go, waiting until he'd passed the crest of the hill before looking away, trotting over to the tree to scoop up his abandoned textbook. Book in hand, he cast a final lingering glance up the hill, then turned and ran back to join his friends.

**

The next day at lunchtime, the boy hung back, looking furtively around him before he tucked his left-over half sandwich under a root of the tree.

The fox came by again in the afternoon, strolling along the hill and sniffing at the air as he caught the faint scent of roasted chicken. He scampered down the hillside to the tree, pawing the remains of the boy's sandwich out from under the tree root. He settled down to eat it, knocking the bread eagerly to one side to tuck into the chicken filling.

He kept half an eye on the school as the children began to spill out, nervous and jumpy as they trickled down the road. The boy, coming out alone today, glanced up the hill, caught sight of the fox and grinned. Slowly, carefully, he made his way up the hill, keeping his eyes on the fox. The fox's ears twitched, his eyes fixed on the boy as he climbed, and he tensed, ready to run.

The boy held his hands up, backed away a few steps, and sat down in the grass. He kept his eye on the fox as he slowly pulled a book out of his bag. He settled down to read, most of his attention on the fox at the top of the hill, who stood, tail swishing, then settled down to lie in the grass.

A rabbit poked its nose out of its burrow and dashed across the hill, and the fox leaped to his feet and charged after it. They circled the tree and shot across the hillside until the rabbit plunged back into its hole. The fox shoved its nose into the hole, tail swishing behind him. The boy shuffled closer, fascinated.

**

Summer faded into autumn. The boy began doing his homework on the hill every afternoon, and keeping half a sandwich in his pocket to feed to the fox. Eventually, as autumn trailed to an end, the fox would take it from the boy's hand, and lie down beside him to eat it.

The leaves were fluttering from the trees, and the boy huddled in his coat as he leant against the tree trunk, tilting his textbook to catch the dimming evening light. The fox nudged his head against the boy's arm and the boy patted him absently.

As the days grew shorter and chillier, the boy stayed less and less long; it was too dark to stay out and study on the hillside. He came out every day, though, after school, and the fox waited for him on the hill, and began trailing him up the path to the village as he left. 

Christmas holidays came around, and the school closed. The fox came to the hill, and seeing the darkened window of the school building, came down to nose around the empty schoolyard. School let out at twenty past three. Three o'clock rolled around, and the fox grew excited; three-fifteen and he was bouncing around the schoolyard; three-thirty came and went. The fox whined and paced, scampering up the lane to look around, jumping up towards the darkened windows, scratching at the school door.

The boy came up the lane at four, and the fox ran out to meet him, barking and leaping up at him to lick his face, dancing around the boy, who burst out laughing.

**

The year passed, summer swung around again; and another year. The boy grew taller, the books he carried around thicker and more complicated. The summer when the boy was seventeen, he grew quieter as the days grew longer, and the fox found him less attentive. He spent more time with his books and when the fox stuck his head into his lap to see what he was doing, the boy would push him away as often as he would pet him. He scolded the fox as he never used to, and told him things he didn't understand about exams and universities and his dreams for the future; dreams the fox didn't entirely understand but which he was increasingly sure would not include foxes, or things foxes understood.

There were weeks when the boy had exams, when he didn't come to meet the fox at all, and the fox waited whining outside the school gates for hours to be rewarded with a distracted pat as the boy passed commiserating with his friends.

The fox waited.

Exams were over, school finished forever, and the boy felt joy at his freedom mixed with mourning for the loss of his comfortable routine; the fox did not yet understand. He felt lost, confused by the seemingly random mix of days when the boy would come early, or late, or not at all, stay for minutes or spend whole days running through the fields with him. And even on those latter days, under his happiness a thread of fear began to run – things were changing, his boy and his world was moving on around him, slipping away from him.

The boy wept on the day he said farewell; hugging the fox, who squirmed in his arms and licked the tears from his cheeks. 

He said he would come back next summer.

The next day, the fox came to the hill above the school; waited there until the sky grew dark, lying whining under the tree.

The day after he came again.

Next summer seemed a long, long way away. Hundreds of days, more days than the fox knew how to count.

The next day, he waited less long, and soon he barely came by at all. School had started again, and there were children running by on the path below, climbing up the hill; there was one who liked to come and swing from the lowest branch of the big sycamore tree.  
None of them were the fox's boy; and he was afraid of them as he had long ceased to be of his boy. They were just enough like his boy to remind the fox of him, but they were not his boy.

And his boy was gone, and next summer was a long, long way away.

The days grew colder, shorter. The fox bypassed the hill by the school, skirting around its base on the way to the chicken farm by the wood.

The chickens were always there.


End file.
